Some feedback on Occult Crescent

Hi, just wanted to leave my feedback here, do with that what you will.

Overall I quite like it, there are things to be improved upon but you can see how it was made trying to tie together feedback from both Eureka and Bozja, and it might be my favorite iteration of this type of content so far. I'll just go by categories now :

Story :

+ The beginning of the story is quite enticing, there isn't too much useless exposition dialogue dragging it on, the atmosphere of mystery when you arrive on the island is great, and the characters have nice designs and personnalities.
+ It's good that progression in the story of the exploration content... is tied to exploration.
+ Can't judge a story without the full picture, but so far it's quite good and I'm really looking forward to the next part.
+ Very personal, but it's nice to get out of the cyberpunk aspect of Dawntrail.

- It's kinda short though, maybe it could use more fleshing out, or maybe just sidequests from other NPCs ?
- It's too bad that there wasn't dialogue recognizing people who did the Scholar quests, especially when Iris showed up. People crave these kinds of interactions, give it to them !


Exploration :

+ As I said, I like that the story is much more tied to exploring the zone, and I really liked having some of the field notes out and about in the zone itself too. It made going to places that might be too dangerous for my level very rewarding.
+ Treasure coffers out in the wild are a great idea too.
+ The mob population doesn't feel too dense like it could feel in Eureka sometimes.
+ Map design is great, most of it is opened and accessible a-la Hydatos, but there are also winding pathways in the caverns or the shadowed city that brings variety. And the overall artistic direction is gorgeous.
+ The music is great, and having it change depending on the part of the map is a great touch. Eureka music was great too, brt it was the only thing you heard for 3 hours.

- Since all the treasure coffers are fixed spawns, it allows us to map out all of their spawns and go around specifically to these places to see if something popped. Hours in, the feeling of "stumbling" upon a coffer kinda disappears. Maybe it could use a bit of randomization on their placements ?

Systems :

+ The level-synch system is great, allowing us to play with friends newer to the content.
+ CEs and FATEs not being tied to a specific knowledge level is cool, kinda erases the problems caused by level disparity for new players.
+ Having the mount from the get-go is amazing.
+ Controversial, but I like that there isn't a tagging system for CEs and that you have to walk. Having that in Bozja made people extremely passive and the zone feel empty.
+ Phantom Jobs are fun, a good reason to keep grinding after hitting max level. It's also less frustrating than Logos/Lost Actions since you don't have to farm items to use them.
+ Occult Return is a good idea, although it might be a bit too free to use. But it works with the CE system.
+ The crystals giving you 30m buffs feel really great.

- Knowledge Level feels a bit hollow though, since the most efficient content is CE and FATE, where this level doesn't matter, you don't really feel a gain in power, more of a pass to not get mobs chasing you in some places.
- Phantom Jobs don't allow for the mix and match Logos/Lost Actions allowed. It controls edge cases, but at the cost of player creativity. I would have liked seeing some actions being able to be mixed and matched with the Freelancer job once another job was mastered.
- Having only one FATE popping at a time feels weird. I understand for CEs, you don't want to split everyone, but for FATES it's a bit of a shame.
- FATEs synching to the number of people that did a few of the last ones. It creates moments where a FATE can get destroyed in 20 seconds.
- The Treasure Coffers loot table having very rare loot from Eureka and Bozja I'm iffy on. On one hand it's great to have now years later an easier way to get them, on the other it drops some incentive to do Eureka or Bozja. The loot table could also use more new stuff in it.
- Magic Pots FATEs, like the bunnies in their time, don't give a pot to follow for every participant that got Gold.
- Speaking of Magic Pots, it feels bad to get dragged to the end of the earth by a pot, find a silver coffer and only get a ribbon and some materias. Materias are so easy to get by these days, it doesn't really feel like a worthwile reward.
- The entry into Forked Tower can be a pain for premade groups, since you can't go into the instance with 48 people already, you have to count on chance putting you into the same instance.
- Mob chains can feel boring the longer you go. In Eureka you had a little bonus for every 5 mobs, and a big one every 10 mobs, but here it's just a 3% increase until mob 30. Bringing back these mechanics would make Gold grinding feel way less tedious.

Combat :

+ Fight design is overall great, mechanics are fast-paced and fun, and can be punishing enough for casual/midcore content.
+ Phantom Jobs have some really fun mechanics. Some can feel a bit too uninteractive like Knight tho.
+ Vuln stacks in CEs staying until the end of the fight or your death is great, as a professional floor tank I approve.

- Mobs having a reduced aggro range and pursuing range. It might have been a bit too much previously, here it might be not enough, increasing the danger could be good.
- Mobs being a bit too uninteractive. They can't be like bosses of course, but having more "mechanics" tied to them like in Eureka Orthos could feel good and improve the chaining part of the gameplay.
- Some visual components can be hard to read if you have issues with your eyesight, like the exploding AoEs in the Berserker CE.


Relic Grind :

+ Being able to do it both in and out of the instance is great, keep doing that until the end of FF14.
+ Weapon design is quite pretty this time around.
+ Having subsequent weapons not require as much of a grind is also very good.

- While atmas are clearly not as bad as original atmas from ARR, not AT ALL, RNG drops still never really feel great. Maybe you could mitigate it by allowing people to buy atmas for a shit ton of gold or silver coins, just so they can still have a reward if RNG keeps messing with them.
- While I don't mind the 1500 tomes for the next weapons, it kind of defeats the purpose of going in the zone and grinding the weapons. A good compromise would be : keep the 1500 tomes, but allow us to keep dropping excess atmas that can be exchanged for the weapon materials still. That way you're still encouraged to keep doing content in the zone to farm your reiics.

That's all I can think of right now, let me know your thoughts. Or don't. Or go drink some tea. You do you.

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Originally Posted by Sekundessounet

A good compromise would be : keep the 1500 tomes, but allow us to keep dropping excess atmas that can be exchanged for the weapon materials still. That way you're still encouraged to keep doing content in the zone to farm your reiics.

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I'd like to point out on this note, that at 20 tomes per CE, Occult Crescent is currently one of the fastest ways to earn Heliometry..
If you stay in the zone for any extended period of time, you will not struggle to earn your remaining weapons.

Whereas methods outside of the instance will be beholden to queue times, they will take much longer to attain the same tome count by compare due to how frequently CE's currently spawn.
As such, it is not a stretch to say that you would be doing yourself a genuine disservice towards earning the other relics you want to obtain if you were to do so outside of the instance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aniya_Estlihn

I'd like to point out on this note, that at 20 tomes per CE, Occult Crescent is currently one of the fastest ways to earn Heliometry..
If you stay in the zone for any extended period of time, you will not struggle to earn your remaining weapons.

Whereas methods outside of the instance will be beholden to queue times, they will take much longer to attain the same tome count by compare due to how frequently CE's currently spawn.
As such, it is not a stretch to say that you would be doing yourself a genuine disservice towards earning the other relics you want to obtain if you were to do so outside of the instance.

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While yes, it is obviously made so that farming inside will always be the best way, having tomes is still nice for people that don't have much time, or just don't enjoy CEs and Exploration Content.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aniya_Estlihn

I'd like to point out on this note, that at 20 tomes per CE, Occult Crescent is currently one of the fastest ways to earn Heliometry..
If you stay in the zone for any extended period of time, you will not struggle to earn your remaining weapons.

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Good to know! I was capped until I got my relic, so I didn’t realize it gave them. Is it giving Mathematics as well?

I agree with pretty much everything OP said. I really feel like they put a lot of thought into what worked and what didn’t from both Eureka and Bozja, and created a zone I really enjoy wandering around and spending time in.

My only real complaint was the RNG aspect of the demiatma drops for the relic. I actually preferred Eureka’s system because you could see progress towards your goal and not be subject to the whims of the fates. lol And of course, the resulting extra rocks that I can’t do anything with… maybe let us turn them in for gold coins, or gear upgrade material?

the two things that are bothering me is :

- why have silver and gold coins when both them of them have similar rewards ? SE sure love having multiple currencies for reasons....

- the rewards you buy with coins are expensive while you earn so little of them (imo fate should give 100 while CEs should give 300-400) and there is really too much things to buy for these "prices", 4000 per gear piece, it's 20 CE for only a piece of gear that have such a little impact there (gold coins rewards are ina way worse state because as you stated, it's mind numbing korean grind)

OC doesn't change my statement on field operations : they are boring as hell because ff14 gameplay isn't made for grinding in the wild. and close to nothing of what we have here can't/shouldn' be put in the overworld.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Good to know! I was capped until I got my relic, so I didn’t realize it gave them. Is it giving Mathematics as well?

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They do, I've capped my Mathematics via OC only.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sekundessounet

- Phantom Jobs don't allow for the mix and match Logos/Lost Actions allowed. It controls edge cases, but at the cost of player creativity. I would have liked seeing some actions being able to be mixed and matched with the Freelancer job once another job was mastered.

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Yeah I am feeling that. Like the phantom job system is interesting yet feels incomplete. So we have a bunch of job shards, not even full crystals, but no way currently to improve or mix them. I guess they are waiting until the next big update? Although that might be just me being hopeful on that.

Also something I find clunky about the phantom job system is swapping between them. As you can benefit from multiple job buffs going from swapping, but its at least a 3-step process to do what you want. I wish there was a way to hotbar the different jobs for ease of swapping. If it exists, I apologize for being blind.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sekundessounet

- Mob chains can feel boring the longer you go. In Eureka you had a little bonus for every 5 mobs, and a big one every 10 mobs, but here it's just a 3% increase until mob 30. Bringing back these mechanics would make Gold grinding feel way less tedious.

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They certainly can get boring when you get a high chain unironically as there is nothing like eureka's where you would've gotten a noise notification for obtaining anemos. Like the closest calls I've had so far when gold farming has been because of my wandering elsewhere.